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Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel

Just about everyone who has put up a bird feeder in their backyard is familiar with the seed stealing Gray Squirrel. These furry creatures are just about everywhere. However, did you know that one of the most common squirrels is the Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus tridecemlineatus)? It can be found in many open areas such as golf courses, pastures, fields and highway rest stops. The thirteen-lined ground squirrel is one of three species of ground squirrel in the Northland. Ground squirrels are very different from the more familiar tree squirrels. Unlike their tree-climbing cousins, the ground squirrels, such as the thirteen-lined ground squirrel lead a subterranean life rarely leaving terra firma. Life underground in tunnels and dens has many advantages such as fewer predators, shelter from the weather and a labyrinth of tunnels to retreat to when presented with danger. The thirteen-lined ground squirrel is often very tame and can be easily fed by hand. They are a diurnal animal which simply means that they are most active during the daylight hours and usually only on sunny days. Cloudy days are usually spent underground. They are also true hibernators–sleeping from late August until mid April. Without a doubt they spend more time underground than they do above ground, which leads me to think, would they be more aptly named “underground squirrels”? But that’s just one naturalist’s opinion. Like many critters in nature, common names come from a specific trait or habit of that particular animal. The thirteen-lined ground squirrel is named for the thirteen stripes that run from the nape of the neck to the base of the tail. This is why it is sometimes called the “striped gopher”. The thirteen stripes consist of seven narrow yellow stripes alternating with six brown stripes. Each of the brown stripes has a row of yellow dots running down the middle. This patterning has lead to another common name, the ‘federation squirrel’, so called because of its pattern of Stars and Stripes. Sometimes confused with the eastern chipmunk, the thirteen-lined ground squirrel is larger, about 6-7 inches and has smaller ears and of course don’t forget the thirteen stripes on its back is a dead give-away. Their tail is about one-third the length of their body. Compared to the eastern chipmunk which is only 3-4 inches long and has only 3 stripes. To accommodate its life scurrying through narrow tunnels, the thirteen-lined ground squirrel has short powerful legs for digging, and short ears. Since it’s protected from the weather by being underground it doesn’t have to snuggle up to a fat bushy tail like the gray squirrel. Due to their long hibernation they only have enough time for one litter of young each summer. It’s not uncommon for a mother to give birth to 7 to 10 young. The high birth rate might make up for the single litter. The young emerge from the underground den between four and six weeks of age. And since they are gregarious animals the young will stay together and later will be digging tunnels near their parents. Their genus name (Spermophilus) is Latin and means ‘seed lover’ and describes its preference for eating seeds. The only problem is they often will eat a wide variety of foods such as insects, mice, voles, lizards, toads, and even eat eggs of ground nesting birds. The term used to describe this wide variety of diet is called omnivore. Until next time…

Northern Lights

Recently I was waiting on the shores of a lake in Northern Minnesota with my parabolic microphone in my hand and my digital audio recorder ready to record. It was one o’clock in the morning and I was waiting for the resident loons on the lake to begin their nightly serenade. I was there to record the four distinct vocalizations of the Common Loon but what I got was a streaming curtain of light across the northern sky-the aurora. The name aurora comes from the Roman Goddess of the dawn and is the name given to the spectacle of light that appears in the skies of earth near the polar regions. In the northern hemisphere, they are called aurora borealis or northern lights. In the southern hemisphere they are called aurora australis or the southern lights. The auroras are caused by the sun. Sometimes the sun has violent storms and spews out a stream of charged particles (plasma) in an event called a coronal mass ejection. The results of the storms are solar winds traveling at speeds of 1 to 2 million miles per hour and are filled with tiny highly charged particles. It takes two or three days but eventually the solar wind reaches the earth. When the particles do arrive, they are deflected towards the North and South poles by the earth’s magnetic field. The particles hit and interact with our atmosphere and the sky begins to glow. The delicate colors of the auroras depend on the height at which the energy particles collide with our atmosphere. Street lamps and neon signs emit different colors of light depending upon the types of gas trapped within the fixture. The same applies for the auroras. If the predominant gas is oxygen and nitrogen the auroras will be red. This is rare and only occurs at times of maximum solar activity. The most common color is green, and yellow again caused by oxygen, but at lower levels. The auroras occur on 27 day intervals and usually last for several nights in a row. Northern lights that occur just after dark are not very showy. The best displays occur around midnight or shortly after. The auroras are never absent from the earth. Every hour of the day, every day of the year, the auroras are blazing somewhere on the earth. However most people can go many years between seeing the northern display. The reason is the aurora spends most of its time around the ends of the earth, where there are plenty of penguins and polar bears but few humans. The best place to view the aurora lights lie within an auroral zone that encompasses the northern polar regions. From Alaska through the Northwest Territories of Canada, around to Norway, Russia and back to Alaska. Along this band, the lights can be seen on virtually every cloudless night from autumn to spring. Small expansions of the auroral zone are common and aurora often spills out to neighboring regions such as our. Oh and by the way, the loons never called that night. I think they were speechless, as I was, and just watched the light show unfold over they heads. Until next time…

Eastern Cottontail

Nothing in nature ever stays the same. It’s always in a constant state of flux. Just as the prairie will gradually transition into a forest and the lake will someday fill with sediment and become a marsh, everything in nature is changing. Animal populations fluctuate also. Ducks, pheasants and white-tailed deer are good examples of this on-going change. The over all populations of these animals go up and down depending upon many factors. Snowshoe hares and lemmings populations cycle up and down in predicable patters. Roughly every ten years the population of snowshoes reaches a peak and then suddenly drops off. These ebbs and flows of populations are not fully understood. Many speculate the population booms and busts are tied to crowding, available food, and the number of predators such as the Northern Goshawk and the Canada Lynx which feed heavily on the snowshoe. The Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) is not a species with a well defined population cycle like the snowshoe but it seems to me that they are at an unusually high population right now. Seems like no matter where I go there is another bunny. The Eastern Cottontail is the most common rabbit throughout the northland. And its uncommonly high population might have something to do with the fact that this bunny reproduces at an astounding rate. Females initially breed in late February and March. Gestation lasts only a month so the first baby cottontails are born very early in the season. Most litters range from four to eight with six as average. In the northland a typical female will produce up to 4 liters per year. In some areas the female population reproduces synchronously (all at the same time). Litters are born to various females within a few days at two week intervals. This synchrony lasts through the entire season. The blind, naked young open their eyes at one week of age and are weaned from their mother’s milk in less than a month. As soon as the babies are furred and hopping around on their own the mother has nothing more to do with them. Young females are sexually mature at 3 months old. Within hours after giving birth the female often mates again. Presuming that none of the offspring die, a single pair of cottontails, together with their offspring, could produce 350,000 baby rabbits in five years. However the death rate of the Eastern Cottontail is incredibly high with few individuals living longer than one year. Combine the cottontail’s prolific reproduction ability and a sharp decrease in predators such as the Red Fox which is highly susceptible to mange, a fatal disease, and you can have very high numbers of cottontails. So enjoy the cottontails while you can. Because, as I mentioned earlier, nothing ever stays the same in nature. Next year the Eastern Cottontail may be scarce again. Until next time…

Bats

Bats are fascinating animals. For one thing, they are the only flying mammal. There are over 1,000 different kinds of bats in the world. That’s an astonishing amount. In fact, bats make up one quarter of all the worlds mammals. Closer to home we have 42 different kinds of bats in North America. Of these, only seven claim the northland as home. All of the world’s bats can be divided into two groups–fruit eating and insect eating. Here in the northland we only have insect eating bats– for obvious reasons. (We have an abundance of insects and relatively few large fruits.) Not to confuse things, but our seven bats can also be divided into two groups– tree bats and cave bats. Tree bats are solitary, unlike the social nature of cave bats. Just as their name implies, tree bats spend their days in the trees. Tree bats also migrate instead of retreating to caves each winter like the cave bats. The most commonly seen bat in your backyard is the little brown bat. Its name accurately describes this bat. In summer the female come together in small maternal colonies where they will give birth to a single baby called a pup. Females congregate in warm out-of-the-way places like hollow trees, rock crevasses, bat houses or attics of homes while the males hang out by themselves. Speaking of hanging. Bats don’t have a problem hanging. Much like birds, bats have a locking tendon in their feet. When the bat hangs upside down its body weight pulls on the tendon and locks the feet in a gripping position. That’s why bats don’t fall off the cave wall when they fall asleep. Contrary to what you might think, bats are not blind. They have very good eyesight, probably as well as yours and mine. But good eyesight doesn’t help in complete darkness. To offset this, bats have evolved a unique way to locate their prey in the dark–echo location. It’s a process of sending out sound waves and waiting for the “echo” to come back. Based on this return sound the bat can “see” in the dark. The echo locating sound is beyond our hearing so we can’t hear this going on. Bats also don’t fly into your hair. Most people who claim to have witnessed this are misinterpreting the bats actions. Flying insects are often attracted to you and buzz around your head. The bats are after the insects and swoop down for an insect dinner. You only see the bat swooping for your head. There are so many interesting aspects of bats that I could go on and on. Until next time…

Bald Eagle

I am often asked what is my favorite animal to photograph. They want me to answer with one distinct and definite favorite critter. Time after time I disappoint them by saying my favorite wildlife to photograph tends to be whatever I happen to be photographing at the time. I haven’t met any animal that I didn’t find amazing. It is often like asking a parent which child is your favorite. You love all of your children and I love all of nature. However, I feel there are some critters that are easier to capture stunning images than others. For example, I photographed a large snapping turtle one time for a book project I was working on and no matter what I did I couldn’t capture a decent or worthy image for the book. Recently I spent 10 days in Alaska leading a photo tour to capture images of our national symbol, the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla). Now this is a wonderful example of a bird/animal that is hard to take a bad picture. It seems that just about anyway or anyhow you photograph this spectacular bird, the images always turn out to be stunning and award winning. There is just something special about Bald Eagles when it comes to photography. When I look back at the last 40 years of my career as a wildlife biologist, author, educator and wildlife photographer, in the beginning there weren’t many Bald Eagles around. The population of the Bald Eagle tanked out in the mid 1900’s. Due to widespread habitat loss, as well as both legal and illegal shooting or trapping, and the widespread use of DDT, which caused the eggs shells of the eagle to be so thin the eggs couldn’t be incubated without the parents breaking the shell, the Bald Eagle were nearly wiped out. In the early 1900’s it was believed that Bald Eagles would grab the legs of domestic animals such as lambs and cows and even human children, leaving them severely injured. Of course, this wasn’t true at all, and so Bald Eagles were shot by the tens of thousands all in the misguided belief in a falsehood. By 1978 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that “the leading cause of direct mortality in both adult and immature Bald Eagles was illegal shooting”. In 1967 the Bald Eagle was declared an endangered species. Amendments to our laws in the 60’s and 70’s increased penalties for violators and more importantly in 1972, DDT was banned from use in the United States. DDT was later banned in Canada in 1989. By the late 1970’s and early 80’s it was estimated that only 100,000 individual eagles existed. So, over the past 40 plus years, the population of Bald Eagles has started to rebound and now it’s not uncommon to see these magnificent birds on a regular basis. The Bald Eagle was removed from the Endangered Species list in June of 2007, and it continues to do well. Today there are an estimated 320,000 eagles. The state of Alaska has the largest and most stable population of Bald Eagles in North America. So it is only natural that is where we would go to capture some stunning images of these incredible birds. We spent 4 days on a small boat cruising around the back bays looking for eagles with an eye towards some beautiful backgrounds. Each day we would meet the boat just before daybreak. We would take a 30-minute boat ride across the bay to search for eagles. We located several hundred eagles, who in mid-winter tend to hang out together looking for food. There were so many eagles that it became a problem to decide which eagles and in what background we wanted to try and capture some images. With the new mirrorless cameras, I am able to take 20 to 30 images per second. This is a good and a bad thing because each day I was taking over 10,000 images of Bald Eagles in pursuit of just the right image. Taking this many images allows me to search through a series of images and find just the one with the wing and body in the perfect position as it snatches fish from the ocean. This kind of image shows the power, strength, and grace of these beautiful birds. So here I am, weeks after the trip and I am still editing and witling down the more than 50,000 images of Bald Eagles, but also looking back at all the wonderful opportunities we had. The time it takes to edit these images is well worth it. If you are interested in going on a photo trip to Alaska for eagles check my web page. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the U.S. to study and capture images of wildlife. He can be followed on www.instagram.com, facebook.com or twitter.com. He can be contacted via his website at www.naturesmart.com.

Cicada

Nothing reminds me more of summer than the thundering buzzing of the periodic cicada. What, you don’t know what a cicada is? Well, just go outside on any warm day in late summer and listen. The loud penetrating buzzing sound coming from the tops of the trees is the cicada. Cicadas are one of the most common summer insect. Admittedly, not many people seen this insect but just about everyone has heard their loud buzzing trill that comes emanating the tops of the trees at this time of year. Cicadas are rather large insects with nearly two-inch long, clear membranous wings that are used to carry them from tree top to tree top. While most insects such as crickets and katydids, use their wings or legs to make sounds, cicadas have a large hollow section of their abdomen that vibrates like a drum to make their specialized and loud call. There are many different species of cicada and each has its own unique song which may be a loud continuous buzz or a pulsating buzz. They are often incorrectly called locusts. The term locust is reserved to describe times when our ordinary grasshopper becomes over populated and causes crop damage. Only the male cicada produces the buzzing sound which is meant to attract prospective females for a tree top rendezvous. After the lofty encounter the female cicada moves to another tree and seeks out small dead twigs where she will wedges her eggs in tiny slits and cracks of the dead branches. She deposits her eggs with a specialized needle-like appendage called an ovipositor. The eggs quickly hatch into small bug-like nymphs that purposefully fall to the ground and land unharmed. The nymph then burrows into the ground where begins to feed on the roots and sap of the host tree. The nymph carries on this subterranean life for many years before emerging. The periodical cicada (Magiciada spp.) emerges only once every 13 or 17 years. They come out by the tens of thousands which usually attracts the attention of the local media because it is such an unusual sight. The more common varieties of cicada, emerges every 1 to 3 years, which means we have at least one species of cicada every summer to serenade us. No matter how long they spend underground, the newly emerged nymphs climb the nearest tree or vertical structure where they attach themselves and then split open their skin and the winged adult cicada finishes the climb to the top of the tree to announce another summer is at hand. Until next time…

Prothonotary Warbler

There is a group of birds that a lot of people find very interesting and yet at the same time very frustrating. These are the warblers. The New World Warblers or sometimes called Wood-Warblers are an interesting group of birds that are often brightly colored, small and spend much of their time at the tops of trees. The bright colors are why many people find them interesting to look at but their nature of hanging out at the tops of trees makes them difficult to watch and very frustrating to correctly identify. Warblers are unique to the New World. For those not familiar with the term “New World”, this means the America’s—North, Central and South America. Our warblers are not closely related to the Old World Warblers or Australian Warblers found in Europe, Asia and Australia. Most of these birds are arboreal, feeding high up in trees and building nests in the upper branches of tall trees, but a number of species feed, live and nest on the ground. We have 53 different species of warbler in North America. There are many more in the tropics of Central and South America. Our warblers are highly migratory and move up into the northern tier states and Canada for nesting and return to the tropics for winter. Most of our warblers are highly migratory. Most warblers have complex and pleasant-sounding songs. Typically, the male is the songster and belts out a loud and musical song in spring to attract a mate and to announce he is willing to defend his territory. Warblers also have a variety of calls. Calls are different from songs. Calls are usually a single sharp note that is given when the bird is alarmed or threatened. These “chip” notes are given by both males and females while males tend to be the sole songster. The songs of warblers tend to be loud and clear. Birds who live, hunt and nest close to the ground tend to have lower pitched songs. The low pitch helps the song carry across the forest floor. Birds that live, and nest high in trees usually have higher pitched songs which allows their songs to travel further due to less obstacles. So basically, the song is optimized for the habitat that they live in. Warblers tend to be small birds, usually under 7 inches in length. Our New World Warblers are often brightly colored, and males tend to have the flashy colors and females’ trend towards the duller side. In spring it is often easier to identify the warblers migrating through your area because of the brightly colored feathers. But in fall many of the warbler species molt into non-breeding plumage, making them all look similar and very difficult to distinguish between the species. All of this info about warblers was rushing through my head the other day while photographing one of the more interesting warbler species. A friend of mine let me know about a pair of Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea) nesting nearby. I dropped everything and went to see it because this is a very interesting bird species. The Prothonotary Warbler is the only warbler species found in the eastern half of the country that nests in a natural cavity. They can also be attracted to nest in wooden nest boxes. They often nest in old woodpecker cavities but are also known to nest in other natural cavities. Although it is often stated that they can excavate their own nest cavity in a rotten stump, I find this highly unlikely due to the size and shape of their bill. They are insect eaters and have a small thin bill to capture insects and doesn’t make for a good excavating tool. The name “Prothonotary” comes from the Byzantine court, official scribes in the Catholic Church, whose members wore golden-yellow robes. Both the male and female Prothonotary Warbler are bright yellow in color, but the male is noticeably brighter. These birds breed mostly in hardwood wetlands, usually in flood planes of major river bottoms. It didn’t take long after I arrive in the flood plane forest to locate the pair of warblers. The male was singing loud near the nest and it’s not difficult to spot these brightly colored birds. Both the male and female were feeding the babies and coming to the nest cavity every 5 mins or so with an wide variety of insects. Each visit the parents would reach into the cavity to feed the young inside which allowed me just enough time to capture some fabulous images of these super color warblers. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author / naturalist and wildlife photographer who travels the world to study and capture images of wildlife. He can be followed on www.instagram.com and facebook.com. He can be contacted via his website at www.naturesmart.com.

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